Engineering Economy 7th Edition by Leland Blank ,Anthony Tarquin

Exercise 56

During the design and specifications development stages of a remote meter reading system for residential electricity use (a system that allows monthly usage to be transmitted via phone lines with no need to physically view meters), the two engineers working on the project for the city of Forest Ridge noted something different from what they expected. The first, an electrical/software engineer, noted that the city liaison staff member provided all the information on the software options, but only one option, the one from Lorier Software, was ever discussed and detailed. The second designer, an industrial/systems engineer, further noted that all the hardware specifications provided to them by this same liaison came from the same distributor, namely, Delsey Enterprises. Coincidently, at a weekend family picnic for city employees, to which the engineers had been invited, they met a couple named Don Delsey and Susan Lorier. Upon review, they learned that Don is the son-in-law of the city liaison and Susan is his stepdaughter. Based on these observations and before they complete the system design and specifications, what should the two engineers do, if anything, about their suspicions that the city liaison person is trying to bias the design to favor of the use of his relatives' software and hardware businesses